About That Night

by Julie James

  Not good.

  “They don’t have any photographs of Kyle and me at the club, do they?” she asked anxiously.

  “Just another one of him staring at your boobs.” Rae put down her phone, seeing Rylann’s face. “I’m kidding. Take a deep breath, Ry. You’re fine. No one will know this is you. It’s a big city, with lots of brunettes.”

  “Right.” Rylann exhaled, slowly climbing down off the ledge and thinking how close she’d come to carelessly blowing her cover.

  Too close.

  ON HER WAY home from the restaurant, Rylann’s cell phone rang. For a moment, as she dug around in her purse to find it, she wondered if it would be Kyle, calling her about the Scene and Heard column. She could practically hear his low, teasing voice already. Just calling to check up on my favorite brunette bombshell, counselor. Thought I’d see if you’d be up for round four tonight.

  Rylann finally found her phone.

  Oh. Just her mother.

  “Mom…hi,” she answered.

  “Looks like I was right to warn you about that Kyle Rhodes.”

  Rylann stopped at a four-way intersection, immediately on high alert. How could her mother, down in Florida, possibly know anything? So she played it cool. “Not sure what you mean, Mom.”

  “I was just reading the Trib online,” Helen said. “The Twitter Terrorist made the Scene and Heard column again.”

  “You read Scene and Heard?” Rylann asked.

  “Sure. How else am I supposed to keep up with all the local gossip while we’re down here for the winter?”

  And by winter, she meant early May. “I haven’t seen this morning’s column,” Rylann said. And technically, that was true—she’d only heard it. “I was busy this morning, then went to lunch with Rae. I’m just walking home now.”

  “Apparently, he was spotted at some hot new nightclub. Leaving with a mysterious brunette bombshell in a red dress. Probably some skank he met that night.”

  Then her mother changed the subject, cheerfully moving on. “Anyway, what’s new with you, sweetie? Did you do anything exciting last night?”

  Yes. Kyle Rhodes. “Um, nothing special. Rae and I went out for a few drinks.” Rylann figured it was best to gloss over the rest of the details, seeing how her mother had just called her a skank. “Out of curiosity, what’s with all the animosity toward Kyle Rhodes? You don’t even know him.”

  “I told you. I didn’t like the way he was looking at you in that photo,” she said. “Who looks at a woman, a perfect stranger, like that in a courtroom of all places? My firm used to represent men like him all the time. Wealthy, charming, think they own the world and can get away with anything.”

  “It’s not like he killed anyone, Mom. He shut down Twitter,” Rylann said. She knew she sounded a bit defensive, but her mother’s words bothered her. She’d seen firsthand the real Kyle Rhodes—the guy who, despite everything, had voluntarily helped her in the Quinn case. Yes, he had his flaws, but there were good parts, too. And not just the naked parts.

  Quickly, she changed the subject, not wanting to talk any more about Kyle Rhodes, the Scene and Heard column, or anything else related to last night. The message had been received, loud and clear: going home with Kyle had been crazy. And Meth Lab Rylann didn’t do crazy.

  Starting now.

  Shortly after arriving home, she hung up with her mother and dropped her purse on the floor in her bedroom. Stuffed to the gills with coconut-crusted French toast and thoroughly exhausted after her night of debauchery with Kyle, she kicked off her shoes and crawled into bed for a nap.

  Over three hours later, Rylann woke to the sound of her cell phone ringing. She sat up in bed, foggy-headed with sleep and disoriented by the fact that it had begun to get dark outside. She leaned over and reached for her purse, grumbling to herself as she rooted around for her cell phone. Somebody had better be dead—and she meant that literally. If there wasn’t an FBI, a DEA, a Secret Service, or an ATF agent on the other end of the line with a major case-related crisis, heads were going to roll.

  She pulled the phone out of her purse and saw “Blocked” on the screen.

  “Rylann Pierce.”

  A familiar male voice spoke.

  “I can’t believe how good it is to hear your voice again.”

  Rylann rolled back on the bed, unable to conceal her surprise.

  “Jon.”

  Twenty-three

  RYLANN LOOKED OVER at the clock on her nightstand and did the math. Rome was seven hours ahead of Chicago. “It’s after two o’clock in the morning for you.”

  “So it is,” Jon said cheerfully. “I just left a friend’s party. There’s a woman in the Rome office, also an expat, who introduced me to some locals. We were celebrating…well, come to think of it, I have no clue what we were celebrating. It’s a fun group.”

  “I’m sure it—”

  He kept right on talking. “One of the guys has a brother who owns a vineyard in Tuscany where we hang out on weekends. You’d love it, babe. The main house is gorgeous. It’s this eighteenth-century villa that’s been renovated and is set right into these green, rolling hills. Molto bello.”

  Rylann blinked.

  Oh, boy.

  Putting aside the fact that Jon was babbling and suddenly breaking out the Italian, she’d caught the “babe” he’d slipped in there. As she knew well from the three years they’d dated, that could mean only one thing.

  She’d just been internationally drunk-dialed.

  “It sounds like Italy has turned out to be everything you’d hoped it would,” she said, still trying to shake the sleep from her head. This conversation had suddenly become very surreal.

  “Not everything.” He sighed dramatically. “The party was at an apartment not far from the Piazza Navona. I left before the others and just started walking. Before I knew it, I was standing at the Bernini fountain, looking at the trattoria with the yellow awning that we loved so much when we came here together. Do you remember?”

  Yes, she did. After a two-day sightseeing whirlwind that had included the Roman Forum, the Vatican, the Spanish Steps, and the Coliseum, they’d decided to take a break. The following day they’d slept in, found a restaurant for lunch, and sat at an outdoor table for hours while talking, people watching, eating good food, and drinking wine. Afterward they’d gone back to the hotel and made love. “I remember. Although that seems like a long time ago now.”

  “Yeah. A lot of things seem like they were a long time ago.” He changed the subject. “So? How have you been?”

  First an e-mail, now he was drunk dialing her. No clue what was going on with her ex these days, but it was probably time she figured it out. “Jon. No offense but…what are you doing? Are we really going to have this conversation at two o’clock in the morning?”

  “We are not having this conversation at two o’clock in the morning. It’s only seven p.m. for you,” he said cutely.

  Rylann thought it was best not to mince words. If for no other reason, the economically frugal government-salaried lawyer in her was very conscious of the fact that this call was costing him a pretty Euro per minute. “Why are you calling?”

  “Can’t a man say hi to an old friend without it being a federal offense?”

  She assumed the pun was intended. “I got the e-mail, remember? We’ve already done the ‘Hi’ thing.”

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing, Ry. From your response you seemed okay, but who can tell anything over e-mail?”

  Rylann ran one hand through her hair. Perhaps, because she and Jon had agreed not to talk after the breakup, it was inevitable that this conversation would occur at some point. People liked to have closure. “I’m doing well. I think Chicago is going to be a good fit for me.”

  “I’ve kept in touch with Keith, Kellie, Dan, and Claire,” Jon said. “They tell me that they’ve only traded a couple e-mails with you since you left San Francisco. When I heard that, I got a little worried.”

  Ah, now she had
a better sense of what was going on here. She’d gotten so swept up in her new life in Chicago that she’d pushed aside, perhaps too quickly, her old one. This had not been entirely unintentional. Keith, Kellie, Dan, and Claire had been their “couple” friends, and after she and Jon had broken up, the whole dynamic had been thrown out of whack. Sure, she’d given it the college try, she’d even met the girls for drinks a few times during the four months she’d still lived in San Francisco after the breakup. But mostly, Kellie and Claire kept asking if she’d talked to Jon after he’d left for Rome—a subject she hadn’t been keen to revisit umpteen times. Especially since the answer had been no.

  “I’ve been busy with work, that’s all,” Rylann said. “But you’re right—I should give them a call.”

  “They’re worried that you’re sitting in Chicago, wallowing in misery.” Jon chuckled. “They even have these romantic notions that you’ve been pining away, thinking about me. So I can e-mail them and say that you’re officially a-okay?”

  His tone was light and jesting, but Rylann wondered if she heard an unspoken question there. “I’m fine. Truly.”

  “They’ll be relieved to hear that. You remember how nosy those guys can get.” His tone remained casual. “And of course the next thing they’ll ask is whether you’re seeing anyone. So the answer to that would be…?”

  “That they should probably stop asking questions while they’re ahead.”

  “Of course.”

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  Jon’s voice turned serious, and suddenly, the whole conversation changed.

  “And what if they said that they miss you?” he asked quietly.

  There it was.

  Rylann took a moment to answer, wanting to see what effect, if any, the words had on her. She felt nostalgic and perhaps even a little sad. Her tone was gentle. “I’d say that they are obviously having this very sentimental, Italian moment with the Bernini fountain and the wine, but that they will undoubtedly wake up in the morning and regret this call.”

  “That was a really good day for us, Ry.”

  She assumed he was still looking at the trattoria with the yellow awning. “It was. But that day is over, Jon.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “We can’t do this,” Rylann interrupted. “I want you to be happy, I really do. But talking makes things too confusing. I think it’s better for both of us to just…move on.” She paused, finding this harder than she’d expected. But still, it was the right thing to do. “Good-bye, Jon.”

  She hung up the phone and exhaled deeply. Then she turned her cell phone off and stared at it for a long moment.

  Beyond a doubt, one of the strangest weekends she’d ever had.

  Twenty-four

  BRIGHT AND EARLY Monday morning, Kyle stood in his new office space, surveying the final touches of the renovation.

  “It looks good,” he told the contractor, Bill, who stood by his side.

  “Of course it looks good,” Bill said, looking satisfied. “I did it.”

  The contractor had come highly recommended by the designer who’d remodeled Dex’s bar, Firelight. He’d cost a fortune, but Kyle wasn’t looking to do things on the cheap. From the moment his future clients—and hopefully there would be some—stepped through the doors of Rhodes Network Consulting LLC, he wanted them to know they were in the hands of professionals.

  Most of the changes Kyle had made to the space had been cosmetic. He’d gotten rid of the industrial gray carpeting and restored the maple hardwood floors underneath. Also gone were the dark paint and heavy oak furniture the former tenant had favored. In its place, he’d brought in low-rise white couches and chairs, and tables and desks made of glass and light-colored marble. The overall effect was an office that looked clean, modern, and sophisticated.

  After giving the reception area and conference room a thorough once-over, Kyle moved next to his own personal office. This was where the biggest structural changes had been made. The contractor’s team had knocked down a wall that had previously separated two smaller offices and redesigned the space as one large corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. Perhaps it was a touch excessive, but after spending four months in prison, Kyle found he still had a distaste for small, confined rooms.

  Besides, he thought as he stood in the center of the room, this felt like a CEO’s office. His office.

  “The place is ready,” Bill said. “Now you just need people to fill it.”

  “That’s the next step,” Kyle said. The office included a reception area, four cubicle workstations with significant room to expand, two additional private offices, and a secretarial station outside of Kyle’s own office.

  “You got a plan?” Bill asked with a grin. “To be honest, I’m kind of curious to see how this works out for you.”

  Kyle’s gaze fell to the sleek, bold, Italian-made aluminum-and-tempered-glass executive desk in the center of his office. It was the desk of a man who wanted to make a statement. “You’re not the only one, Bill.”

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, Kyle gassed up the Mercedes and hit the road. Because it was only seven a.m., traffic was relatively light by Chicago standards, and it took him thirty minutes to reach the city limits. Then he merged onto I-57 and settled in for a two-hour drive.

  He was heading south, to Champaign-Urbana. It was the perfect morning to be on the road: the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the temperature hovered right below seventy degrees. He cracked open the window, breathed in the fresh air, and turned on the radio. It felt good to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, even if only for a day. It was just him, the open road, a fast car, and good music.

  None of which, unfortunately, distracted him from thinking about Rylann.

  He’d been busy with work these past couple days, yet he still hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. He’d be riding the elevator up to his penthouse, or going for an early morning run, or taking a shower, and suddenly—bam—there she was.

  Actually, he thought about her a lot when he was in the shower.

  The images of her, wet and naked as the jets beat down around them, would probably be burned in his brain forever. Right next to the memory of her ever-so-fine ass as she practically sprinted out of his penthouse on Saturday morning.

  By all accounts, it had been the perfect hookup. Amazing sex, no strings attached. He should have been satisfied. Relieved, in fact, since no-strings-attached sex was exactly what he was looking for at this point in his life. And now he could close the book on this unusual story that had begun between him and Rylann Pierce nine years ago.

  Yet the story still felt…incomplete.

  Kyle shook his head, seriously tempted to bang it against the steering wheel a few times, since he obviously needed to snap the fuck out of whatever haze he’d been living in these past couple days. A man who was a committed bachelor did not complain when a smart and sexy woman blew his mind with three rounds of incredible sex and then left without any expectations in the morning. Probably, that was something no man of sound mind and body should complain about. It went against the Man Code of Conduct—like failing to leave a buffer urinal when taking a leak next to another dude in a public restroom.

  That settled, Kyle turned his focus to work and contemplated the significance of today’s journey. Specifically, that this would be the first time he’d returned to Champaign since the day his mother died. He hadn’t intentionally avoided the place; things had just worked out that way. For several months after her accident, he’d been overseeing matters for his father and simply hadn’t had the chance. Things had been so busy, in fact, that Dex had even packed up Kyle’s things and driven his car up to Chicago.

  Eventually, the situation with his father had improved, but by that point Kyle had begun blazing a trail up the corporate ladder at Rhodes Corporation. Shortly thereafter, Dex had moved to Chicago to open his first bar in Wrigleyville, and the two of them, and the rest of their guy friends, fell
into a lifestyle of working hard during the week and having a good time on the weekends—clubs, women, beach volleyball, and boat parties on the lake during the summer months, football in Lincoln Park and pickup basketball games at East Bank Club when the weather turned cooler.

  Not a bad life. Far from it. Although perhaps a life that had begun to feel a bit superficial as Kyle had settled into his thirties.

  And now here he was. Thirty-three years old with a prison record—but also with a chance to make a fresh start. Rhodes Network Consulting LLC was his opportunity to show everyone what he was capable of other than being the Twitter Terrorist. He’d had a great career at Rhodes Corporation, while it had lasted, and he had no regrets about working for his father. But now it was time to take the plunge and build something he could call his own.

  And pray like hell that he didn’t fall flat on his face while doing it.

  As part of his business strategy, Kyle had e-mailed Professor Roc Sharma, his former PhD advisor and the head of UIUC’s Department of Computer Sciences, and had asked if they could meet. Sharma had indicated that he was available today, but he hadn’t said much more.

  After Kyle had dropped out of the PhD program following his mother’s car accident, Sharma had been understanding and sympathetic. They’d exchanged e-mails periodically over the years and had remained on friendly terms. They had not, however, had any communication since he’d been convicted in federal court on several counts of cyber-crime.

  Safe to say that was a big no-no in the eyes of the Department of Computer Sciences.

  Kyle had no idea what to expect when he walked into his former mentor’s office. He was encouraged, at least, by the fact that Sharma had taken the time to respond. Then again, the professor had always been known for his long-winded lectures—perhaps he simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to deliver one personally to the Twitter Terrorist.